Worried about what’s happening at British Cycling? Concerned that recent revelations indicate it’s a fundamentally sick institution rife with sexism, racism and ableism? Relax! I’m here to explain why you can carry on cheering and waving flags and just generally LOVING how totally brilliant we are at everything.

Marvellous

1. Nobody ever complained about anything at BC before now, so everything must have been fine.
2. Well, apart from that review in 2012.
3. Nobody changed anything after the 2012 report, though, so it can’t have found out anything that important.
4. Oh, yeah, there was that book in 2012, too. But, well, she was never a team player. You know.
5. All the people who’ve complained about their treatment have chips on their shoulders because they didn’t get picked for stuff.
6. Well, okay, some of them got picked for stuff. But all the other people who’ve complained are well-known for crying a lot.
7. Well, all the women are well-known for crying a lot.
8. Top-level sportswomen cry at, like, EVERYTHING. They’re just bags of nerves. Honestly.
9. Okay, only some of the women are well-known for crying a lot. Maybe only one. Whatever. You get my drift.
10. Women have REALLY good imaginations. They’re always imagining stuff like sexism, when all anyone was doing was commenting on their arse in a totally supportive way and calling them ‘man one’ because, well, what, hang on, you mean there’s a WOMEN’S team sprint? Gosh.
11. No men have reported sexist comments being made about them, so there can’t have been any.
12. Lots of able-bodied athletes have said nobody ever called them ‘wobblies’ or ‘gimps’, so the others are obviously imagining it.
13. Lots of high-profile men have said everyone was always totally lovely to them, and they’re the REALLY successful athletes – you know, the PROPER ones that get lots of funding and everything – so we should listen to them.
14.None of the men said anyone told them they should go and have a baby. If anyone said it to a woman, he was probably just concerned about her making the right choices. Women always appreciate help with that.
15. No white athletes have ever been called ‘dirty terrorists’, so that must have been just banter. Where would we be without banter? What do you mean, in a more equitable and tolerant society?
16. Everyone at BC is always nice to their old mum.
17. Anyway that bloke’s resigned now, hasn’t he, so it’s all fine. Phew. Carry on!

Good morning, and welcome to Bike Maintenance For Ladies, episode 37 in an occasional series. Observe the picture above*. There’s a lot we can learn from this neat demonstration of how to change a bicycle puncture.

First, note that the bicycle has been removed from the road, away from passing traffic, and leant gently up against a rock or tree stump. Do not lie your bicycle on its side, especially with the chainset downwards; you risk scratching the paintwork and damaging your derailleur. NEVER balance your bicycle upside down to effect repairs, as this will scuff the saddle and ruin your handlebar tape.

Protective sheeting has been put down to protect the floor from dirt and debris – although if you keep your bicycle scrupulously clean, as in the picture, you’ll find less maintenance is required overall.

Always carry spares and tools. If, like this rider, you prefer to ride without mudguards, you may feel a seatpack detracts from the clean lines of your machine. Simply use your spare inner tube as a hair scrunchie until required.

The rider has removed the front wheel carefully and propped it against her knee, saving the spindle from potential damage caused by contact with the tarmac. Observe how she lines up the valve on the replacement tube with the hole in the rim. Tyre levers are not always necessary: a good strong set of gel fingernails makes a perfectly acceptable substitute.

There are, however, some points for improvement in this demonstration. Firstly, the rider does not appear to be wearing socks. This is unhygienic, allowing the bacteria naturally present in sweat to propagate unfettered in your trainers. Secondly, road riders should always wear a helmet.

I’m off to Munich this weekend, with my lovely fabulous barbershop chorus, the White Rosettes. We’re guests at BinG!, the German barbershop convention, and we’ll be singing on stage three times over two days, then finding as many opportunities as possible to sing in stairwells, in corners of the bar and so on. I used to speak fairly good German, so I thought I’d put together a set of useful phrases that my fellow Rosettes could employ over the weekend. In true barbershop style, I’ve provided teach tracks. Mach’s gut!

At the hotel

Do you have room service? Double egg and chips, please.

Haben Sie Zimmerservice? Zweimal Spiegelei mit Pommes, bitte.

I’m having a disco nap and do not wish to be disturbed

Ich mache Schläfchen und möchte nicht gestört werden.

Please could I book an alarm for nine thirty. No, that’s correct. I am English. That’s early.

1. Only impressionable under-23s with Machiavellian parent-managers motordope. The pros have been definitely not motordoping since at least 2010. Everyone knows that.

2. EPO is like, so last season. Procyclists are FAR too fashion-forward to be doing it now. They won’t even wear the same shades as last year. You’re telling me they’re still doing drugs?

3. Testing is really amazing these days. Everyone has basically given up because they know they’ll get caught, as soon as they’ve retired. Their reputation will be in tatters and they won’t be national treasures or get commentating gigs or anything.

4. The UCI are committed to routing out cheats and punishing them severely, by giving them two-year bans and only letting them have Cat 2 licences when they come back.

5. The really bad offenders have to sit on anti-drugs-in-sport boards, and become the Mr Mackeys of cycling.

6. It’s only a few bad apples. Well, and their dads. And their spouses. And their brothers. And their doctors. And their mechanics. And their team managers.

7. If Modern Cycling gets too much, you can squinch your eyes tight shut and imagine you’re back in seventy-something and Eddy’s bossing the peloton with a single sneer like the Brabantse Elvis and Hinault’s knocking bystanders out with a mere EYEBROW and cycling is marvellous and epic and heroic and totally believable and nobody ever falls off their bike suddenly.

8. Or you can go back to the nineties when nobody wears a helmet so you can still tell who is who and there are real climbers and rouleurs and nobody is good at everything and there are proper CYCLING HEROES like Pantani.

9. Anyway, there are BRITISH PEOPLE winning bike races these days, and THEY can’t possibly be cheating, because it just wouldn’t be cricket. So, marginal gains, and, you know. Beetroot. I’m cheering for beetroot. GO BEETROOT.

Cycling Weekly’s Worst Cycling Inventions were all a bit foreign to me. My cycling’s firmly at the ‘enthusiastic but a bit rubbish’ end of the spectrum, so I’ve felt no need for Spinaci bar extensions or Spinergy wheels (although my first commuter bike did feature Biopace rings; it’s nice to think there’s a reason I was so slow). However, cycling is RIFE with other rubbish things. Here’s my list of the REAL worst cycling inventions.

Arsey bastardy buggety bloodery

1. Pannier fixings with those stupid elastic hooks. How many hours I wasted fiddling with these, tightening them, loosening them, snapping my fingers on them, swearing, then losing them when I took the panniers off, while the Manchester rain beat down upon me and local dogs revved themselves up, I don’t know. A lot.

2. Gel seat covers. Designed to give terrible saddles a momentary illusion of comfort, all they’re really good for is carefully storing the rain you avoid while you’re at work and timed-releasing it all over your arse on the way home.

3. Mini LED lights. After a lifetime of lugging battery lights around in case you get invited out for a drink, these look like THE ANSWER. So teeny! So cute! So light! So bright! Just pop them in your pocket! Except they don’t work in the cold. Or in the rain. And they go out suddenly if you go over a bump, and don’t tell you. And when you take them off to give them technical taps, you drop the elastic things in a puddle.

Only acceptable use of LEDs on a bike

4. Single-sided pedals. As if getting clipped back in while going uphill wasn’t difficult enough already.

5. Tyres that are physically impossible to get back onto the rims if you’re a woman. A gent once stopped, kindly, as I cursed and wept over a flat. He must have been seventy. He offered to help. I let him.

I got all excited when I saw Gillian Moore’s Sinfini piece, Classical etiquette: the new rules. Finally! I thought. Someone arguing that people shouldn’t be keelhauled for sneezing in a quiet bit! Sadly, Moore’s new rules are basically the old ones, with a bit of ‘Calm down, everybody!’ attached.

I understand all this. I really do. I know that classical music isn’t amplified and you need to shut up in order to hear it properly. I get that performances will differ in subtle ways and you need to pay attention in order to pick these up and enjoy them. But some research suggests that coughing may indicate a lack of engagement, rather than a wilful attempt to spoil everyone else’s fun. Could people be allowed to engage with what’s going on a bit more?

I sometimes think I was born at the wrong time. Mozart-era concerts sound like a lot of fun. Apparently everyone was rowdily engaged, shushing each other in the quiet bits, applauding, yelling ‘da capo!’, chatting and laughing, and quite possibly chucking things if they didn’t approve. People got into fights over their favourite performers. It all sounds right up my street.

When I listen to music at home, I sing along, talk over the bits I don’t find that interesting, crank up the best bits and lie on the carpet. I nudge anyone who’s in the room and go ‘No, listen! I love this bit!’ I’ve been to classical concerts where I wanted to clap and whistle when I recognised the opening bars of my favourite song, like I would at a rock gig.

Iestyn Davies, not singing in my living room, but, you know. Near enough. (Picture by Andrea Liu)

And it’s not all about me. I sometimes feel like we’re missing something else, something bigger, that we could be experiencing if we stopped looking on our fellow concertgoers as an irritation, and started taking notice of them. What would it be like if we tried to enjoy being in a room with a lot of other people, experiencing the music as a group, rather than all sitting in our individual seats feeling aggrieved that the chap next to us is manspreading and the woman in front is so ridiculously tall and trying in vain to pretend that Iestyn Davies is singing to us ALONE in our living room for our personal delight (however brilliant that sounds)? What if we weren’t scared to react to what was going on – if we turned to our neighbours and grinned, got to our feet and moved around, sang along and danced and interacted with each other? Maybe went for a beer in the bits we didn’t like, and worked our way to the front for our favourites?

Ah, you say, knowingly. It’ll never work. Tom Morris came a cropper last year with his no-rules approach to audience engagement at the Bristol Alternative Proms. With no etiquette to stifle them, the audience simply took the policing of other people’s behaviour into their own hands, forcibly ejecting a chap who tried to crowdsurf in the Messiah’s moshpit.

But this stems from the unhappy mixing of people who want to loosen up a bit, and people who don’t. Glyndebourne has separate performances for the under-30s. I think we need Performances for the Under-Disciplined. Then all the people who want to shoulder-poke can go to regular performances and tut loudly at each other’s programme-page-turning, and the rest of us can have some fun. I’ll bring the plonk, if you bring the sarnies.